Opera Loudspeakers
Callas
Floorstanding Speakers

Product Description

With its massive solid hardwood cabinet and beautiful craftsman finish, the Callas has already reached the status of a modern classic.
Reviewers have been moved to comment on the grace, vitality and warmth in the sound, on the "breathtaking" treble, the solidity and depth of the bass, and the midrange which "caresses the human voice". Truly a thoroughbred among loudspeakers.
Selected components and modified design further improve this version.

User Reviews

Overall Rating:

Value Rating:

Submitted by
MasterAudiophile
a AudioPhile

Date Reviewed: October 22, 2004

Bottom Line:

The Operas Callas is a monitor quality loudspeaker designed for shelf or stand mounting. Made from the highest furniture quality cabinetry and ultra-high performance Danish drivers, it sets new standards for performance and build quality in it’s price range. It is a must listen for anyone shopping for a musical experience designed to express the emotions and texture of music while enabling absolute pitch, accurate rhythm and correct timbre to be reproduced faithfully.
The drivers are high end line Scan-Speak units. The tweeter is a 1” dome D2905/9700. This is the Revelator tweeter without the concave faceplate. The Mid-Woofer is a 5” 8530-K000 with exceptional excursion abilities for a driver of this size. Both drivers represent best of breed in all respects with a resulting loudspeaker frequency response which is wide and flat. The crossover is Second Order set at 2.2 kHz, and also made up of very high quality components. With a nominal impedance of 8 Ohms, it has a sensitivity of 87 db. Power handing is rated as 30-100 watts.
The gold plated bi-wire connectors on the back of the cabinet are of high quality and substantial in nature. There is adequate room to connect a bi-wire set properly without crowding the cables. I had no problem connecting my QED Genesis Silver Spiral bi-wire cables which are a bit on the unruly side to connect on many lesser connectors.
The cabinets are custom furniture quality solid mahogany sculpted into a multi-dimensional enclosure that is structurally rigid and aesthetically pleasing. Weighing in at 28lbs a piece these cabinets simply ooze quality. There is a small bass reflex port on the back of the enclosure. The wood is flawless and the entire enclosure screams hand finishing to perfection throughout.
The shape accommodates a non-linear cabinet design to contribute to a truly box-less sound. The cabinets are fully finished from top to bottom, sides and back in the same flawless cabinetry. There is no doubt that the solid wood cabinet supports this speaker’s drivers in a similar manner as does a ebony grand piano support its strings. There is just something about the mutli-dimensional hollow unbraced solid wood enclosure that brings the drivers to life in a manner pressboard simply cannot match. Ever see a concert grand piano or a violin made of braced pressboard? I rest my case on real wood.
Listening to these speakers is fatigue free at all reasonable dynamics. There is an immediate sense of space and air surrounding individual instruments and voices. There is a delicacy of detail that makes each disk played a new experience. Compared to the reference speakers in place, (B&W N805)there seemed to be a veil lifted off the inside of the physical environment of the source recordings, and a new focus and clarity to all instruments and voices.
Dynamics were life like and wide, driven by the YBA 50 watt integrated being used. The sense of blackness behind the soundstage was beyond anything I had ever heard in my listening room. The bass from these small cabinets belies their diminutive size. The 5” Mid-Woofer is a long excursion design that gives one the impression of a large vented floor standing cabinet, but with the disappearing effect that only a smaller box can achieve. The mid range is transparent and open with a sense of air and accuracy that once again, only a smaller size enclosure like this can achieve.
The female voice is textured and expressive, devoid of air flow restrictions perceived with most mid range drivers. Combined with the 1” Scan-Speak tweeter, the reproduction of the brass family on a variety of recording was such that one could identify the brand and model of instrument being played by the individual artists. There was no edge to the reproduction, with only a natural ringing of the brass instrument bell being perceived in the listening room.
The most startling improvement to my previous reference speaker was an obvious ability of the speaker to not just attack a sustained tone but to finish and complete the end of a tone with expression, inflection and resolution. Other families of instruments exhibited the same obvious excellence in both the attack and resolution of all tones. This is what bring emotion to music, and this speaker allows that emotion to pass through adding little of its own character, except perhaps to make the musical experience more natural and expressive than you thought possible in your home listening room at this price point.